Teabagging in our time: After Obama, the deluge?

What if Barack Obama fails? The subject has already been broached far and wide, and in perfectly respectable circles, but the question of consequences is usually restricted to the economic fallout if his administration is unable to put the system on a better, more stable footing in his four years. Yesterday's tax-deadline tea party protests should be enough to remind everyone that there would be political consequences too--and, like the economic crisis itself, they may be unlike anything we've seen in living memory.

The screaming red headline at Drudge this morning: "Governor says Texas can leave the union if it wants." The backstory here is that Texas Governor Rick Perry recently endorsed a state House of Representatives resolution declaring that "all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed." As Politico's Andy Barr notes, that's a direct reaction to the near-$800 billion stimulus package, a portion of which--$550 million for unemployment assistance--Perry rejected because of future obligations it would have posed for the state.

Yesterday Perry, with no small glee, intimated to a flock of the red-meat right at Austin City Hall that Texas just might secede from the union at some point. He didn't use the word himself--no self-seeking pol can do that publicly, yet--but the Dallas Morning News reports that many in the crowd did, and with Perry's implied blessing. As he said to the military vets in the crowd, "I'm just not real sure you're a bunch of right-wing extremists. But if you are, we're with you." That last is a reference to a recent Homeland Security report (embedded here) calling right-wing extremists a domestic terrorism threat, which has demagogues on the right screaming bloody murder.

Perry, who is running for reelection in 2010 and dreaming of bigger things for 2012, was careful to half-disavow exactly the sentiments he was encouraging: "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that." It isn't hard to discern his point, which is that there's anti-federal and anti-Obama insurrection in the air and that's a good thing.

And so, three years and six months before the next presidential election, we have not one but two apparent White House aspirants who have professed sympathy for secessionist impulses. Sarah Palin, you'll remember, has a much longer-standing secessionist pedigree than Texas's Johnny-Reb-come-lately governor; her husband Todd was a member of the Alaska Independence Party until it became a potential blight on her political career. And though Sarah was not, she was great friends with them.

Apparently post-partisanship is not all it's made out to be. I don't think for a moment Perry, or probably even the Jesus-drunk Palin, is serious about wanting a breakup of the United States. What would be left to run for? What they really want is a mob to propel them to--the heights of federal power. But here it really is the thought that counts: Rick Perry is not likely to fire on Fort Hood anytime soon, but the energies he and his fellow travelers are helping to coalesce will more likely than not overrun them in time. Fear of falling on the scale that Americans are now experiencing inevitably spawns a widespread wish for order and security that has always raised the stock of fascism. Is there a Mussolini in the house? A Cromwell?

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Comments (9)

Submitted by Glenn Mesaros on April 16, 2009 - 8:35am.

As I attended both "tax rallies" on April 15, I was struck by the fact that they represented genuinely American people who are reacting to the depression collapse around them. However, they were ignoring the shadow of the Wells Fargo building in downtown St. Paul: this bank is NOT making money; it is bankrupt. By law it should be taken over by the FDIC and put through orderly bankruptcy proceedings to sort out the fraud they have been perpetrating for the last 20 years.

These were Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a luncheon meeting of notables in Washington, D.C. April 15, 2009.

This past Saturday I delivered a international webcast, which some of you may know something about, and some may not, which had three segments which I addressed. First, was some opening remarks which have sent shock waves through the present Administration in Washington, the Presidential administration. The President himself was shocked, according to his representative, by what I said. But it was necessary for me to say it.

We're in a period, in which the role of the United States is absolutely crucial in the possibility of a recovery from what is not a depression, but is a global economic breakdown crisis. There's been nothing like this in European history since the Middle Ages, since the so-called Dark Age of the Fourteenth Century. This is not a depression. This is a total breakdown crisis.

Now, such crises can be corrected, which is what I'm concerned about, and they're corrected by a reorganization of the economic system, by actions among nation states, to reorganize their relationships in order to organize a recovery, and in order to staunch the flood of breakdown in process.

Unfortunately, the President's economic policies, as influenced by various people who are presently in control of his policies, is an absolute disaster. It's a disaster not only for the United States, it's a disaster for the planet. Because there can be, because of the role of the dollar—it's not a reserve currency in the old sense that it was before 1968-73, but the dollar-denominated debt in the world is the largest factor, and therefore the ability to recover from this world depression, and to reorganize and restart international trade, depends upon a reorganization of the role of the dollar, which means ending the world monetary system in its present form, and going to an international credit system, under which a fixed exchange rate system among nation states, will be the basis for turning the dollar—which is now almost a waste product—turning it back into something which is of value for the world as a whole.

And the President presently has no grasp of it.

Otherwise, the good side is, that, with a few exceptions, who I would like to throw out the window, most of the cabinet and related people that have been brought in with this Administration, are competent and capable people. Whether I agree with a lot of everything or not, is irrelevant. They are competent, and left to their own, and with the right guidance, they would be a good instrument in international relations, and otherwise, for getting the world organized to get out of what is otherwise, a general breakdown crisis.

That's where we stand.

You can watch an archive of the Larouche webcast on www.larouchepac.com - plus see the analysis of James K. Galbraith, son of FDR advisor, John Kenneth Galbraith.

Good reporting, Steve Perry. With an exception - you give us too much credit for knowing Cromwell's relevance to this crisis and the fear it's generating. We need to be very, very clear that the protests yesterday - and no doubt in the future - are not only about taxes but the battle for the future of America - politically, economically and culturally. Tea Party protests were organized and funded, not by the grassroots as claimed by promoters, but by the same big money, religious extremists and right wing media (Fox) that have fed the flames for the past 30 or so years. It was NOT an uprising of America's grassroots. The level of hate and racisim broadly exhibited was appalling, maybe not in Minnesota nice but as reported in national media. And the level of violence inferred was terrifying. This protest was not obviously FOR anything, it was AGAINST Obama's abenda. Those of us who have a progressive vision for America - as evidenced in the November elections - need to be very well informed, vocal and persuasive.

Doug Moodie: And if we sold Texas to Mexico (with George Bush and his library thrown in as a special gift), we will have solved the northward drug-smuggling and the southward gun-smuggling problems and a large chunk of the immigration problem all at once! Although ... Arizona and New Mexico might have to go, too. Hmm.

Steve.
You seem to be somewhat confused as to the origins and characteristics of Fascism.

Fascism is, if fact, a collectivist ideology of the left, and is a natural manifestation of unbridled government. Its distinction from Socialism and Communism is that the means of production remain private, but with firm Government control and direction. Such was the case in Fascist Italy, and such was the case in Fascist Germany.

The economic mutation known as Fascism has great advantages for Government in that it provides complete control with virtually no responsibility. The government can run businesses and economies into the ground by regulation and manipulation, but can in the end absolve itself of the inevitable poor outcomes by saying it was all the fault of the greedy or incompetent private sector.

Such is what is happening today. The tentacles of our huge, bloated Federal government have reached into all of our major industries, from banking to insurance to mortgages to automobiles. More insidiously, taxes and regulation are slowly strangling small business as well.

Another telling characteristic of Fascism is intolerance of dissent, for that is contrary to the advance of the collective. And with the release of a recent DHS report, we now we see that those who might question or criticize unconstitutional overreach are branded “right wing extremists,” are duly demonized, de-ligitimized, and eventually may well be outlawed -by force if necessary.

Those on the left love to ascribe conservative efforts to reign in big government as manifestations of Fascism. Little do they comprehend that Hitler himself was a leftist, who learned the totalitarian utility of concentration camps from the Soviets, and who signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that kept American Leftists agitating for isolationism during the early years of WWII. It was only after Hitler reneged on the Molotov-Rebbentrop pact and invaded the “workers Paradise” that American leftists (communists) were activated by the commintern to change the nature of their agitprop from isolationism to interventionism.

In your intellectual laziness and politically-correct historical revisionism its easy to characterize any opposition to left-wing activism as Fascism, but that is just not the case. Fascism, a form of leftist totalitarianism, is just another way to get the little people to salute the collectivist schemes of the political elites. Such was the case in Italy, such was the case in Germany, and such may be the case in America if we accede to the growing power and influence of our central government.
Your Mussolini or Cromwell may well be in the house. The White House, that is.